"A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey to peace"--

Elisa - orphaned as a child, raised by a 'fallen woman', fed by fairy tales - has lived in an outlandish imaginary world for years. When her guardian dies, she feels compelled to confront her family's tortured and dramatic past, weaving the tale of her mother and grandmother through a history of intrigue, treachery, deception and desire. But as her saga of three generations of Sicilian women proceeds, it becomes something else entirely, taking in a whole legacy of oppression and injustice. By turns flamboyant and intense, raging and funny, Lies and Sorcery is a celebration of the female imagination, and the power of storytelling itself. First published in 1948, Elsa Morante's debut novel won the Viareggio Prize and earned her the lasting admiration of generations of writers from Italo Calvino and Natalia Ginzburg to Elena Ferrante. Translated by Jenny McPhee

From a small, bogside cabin in rural New England, 38-year-old Aimee Slater unravels the story of her life, attempting to make sense of the tangled thread that leads from her mother's house-a short, unbridgeable distance away-to the world she now inhabits. It is soon after the Civil War; Aimee lives alone, but is graced with visits from two friends, a crippled man and a troubled eleven-year-old girl. She is perpetually caught between the sensual world she so desires and the divine retribution passed down to her by her mother's scorn. How Aimee ultimately creates a life for herself and bridges that distance makes for a moving story of love and loss. Told in a voice of spare New England lyricism, Unravelling is a remarkably haunting account of the power of redemption.

Traces the transformations of themes in women's writings by examining three women author's works.

Tolstoy famously wrote, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." To Tracy Farber, thirty-three, happily single, headed for tenure at a major university, and content to build a life around friends and work, this celebrated maxim is questionable at best. Because if Tolstoy is to be taken at his word, only unhappiness is interesting; happiness must be as placid and unmemorable as a daisy in a field of a thousand daisies. Having decided to reject the petty indignities of dating, Tracy focuses instead on her secret project: to determine whether happiness can be interesting, in literature and in life, or whether it can be--must be--a plant with thorns and gnarled roots. It's an unfashionable proposition, and a potential threat to her job security. But Tracy is her own best example of a happy and interesting life. Little does she know, however, that her best proof will come when she falls for George, who will challenge all of her old assumptions, as love proves to be even more complicated than she had imagined. Can this young feminist scholar, who posits that "a woman's independence is a hothouse flower--improbable, rare, requiring vigilance," find happiness in a way that fulfills both her head and her heart? Love may be the ultimate cliché, but in Rachel Kadish's hands, it is also a morally serious question, deserving of our sober attention as well as our delighted laughter.

The life story of this daring news reporter, globetrotter, and advocate for women's rights is presented chronologically from birth to death.

"At last, National Geographic's award-winning photobiography of Annie Oakley bursts into paperback. This stirring story of an enduring American heroine has won widespread acclaim and was named a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year. Annie's amazing life comes sharply into focus in a compelling narrative, period photography, and in her own words. Two historical maps and a chronology ground the legend in time and place. Readers ride through a life filled with adventure. Annie grows up in the backwoods of Ohio, hunting game to feed her family. Discovered by Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, she wows crowds with target shooting and daring horse riding. Annie's hardships are examined too, as is her inspirational status as a role model for women. Awards include:"American Library Association Notable BookBest Book of the Year―School Library JournalTexas Bluebonnet Award Master List

Women of Faith, renowned for their unique combination of personality and truth, offer fresh new messages in four new topical study guides in the popular Women of Faith Study Guide Series. Each study guide, teeming with insights and quotes from the conference speakers provides twelve weeks of Bible study and a leader's guide for small groups.

Elana Sztokman arrived in Israel in 1993 as a young religious mother wearing a long skirt and a hat covering her hair. Today, nearly 30 years later, after spending years fighting for women's rights in Orthodoxy, writing books about gender in religion, and eventually leaving that world behind, she confronts the personal struggles behind the public persona, revealing the traumas from her past that affected her entire relationship with her body. From two-time winner of the National Jewish Book Council Award comes a refreshing and very personal exploration of cultures of the female body in Jewish life. This collection of essays - marking the 25-year anniversary of her feminist awakening and spanning a diverse career of research, writing, and advocacy around Jewish women's experiences - offers political and personal insights and retrospectives on some of the most burning issues today. Topics include: sexuality, relationships, body-image, body-cover, ritual immersion, fat-shaming, slut-shaming, domestic violence, and sexual abuse. Elana brings her characteristic honesty, courage, wit, and profound insight into her writing, and shares some of her own traumas that set her on a sometimes tortuous life path.

From the first appearance of the lead essay in this collection in 1969, Vivian Gornick established herself as one of the most respected voices in the new literature of contemporary feminism. Speaking always for herself, always maintaining her independence, while at the same time reflecting and commenting upon current feminist concerns, Gornick became one of the most eagerly read writers in The Village Voice, The New York Times and other periodicals. With characteristic passion and a quick, penetrating intelligence, she dissects the culture that is at the root of female oppression. This collection will stand as a permanent record of the evolution of one feminist's personal consciousness over the seven years that paralleled the renaissance of American feminism. These are essays to be read and reread for years to come, as both men and women begin to assimilate what we have all learned from the women's movement.--From publisher description.

"Moacyr Scliar was the preeminent literary voice of the Jewish immigrant experience in modern Brazil. Now his most ambitiously satirical and irreverent novel is at last translated into English, offering not just a significant contribution to Latin American and Jewish literature but to world literature as well. In a past-life therapy session, a mysterious woman makes a remarkable breakthrough when she discovers that in a previous life she was one of King Solomon's seven hundred wives. In language that hilariously mixes modern jargon and biblical diction, she sets out to tell the story of her earlier incarnation three thousand years in the past, revealing how she went from a provincial nobody to a queen. Yet being royalty isn't all it's cracked up to be. As the least desirable of King Solomon's wives and concubines, she is unceremoniously discarded and forgotten in his harem. But as luck would have it, she possesses a unique gift: she is a woman who knows how to read and write. Once her talent is discovered, King Solomon charges her with writing what will become one of the most important texts in human history. Along the way our nameless narrator leverages her newfound status as royal scribe to bring about her own secret agenda. A brilliant feminist critique skewering the absurdities of patriarchy, The Woman Who Wrote the Bible is a comic masterpiece of truly biblical proportions"-- Provided by publisher.

Examines the personal values and philosophies of Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, and Etty Hillesum in relation to the pressures and conditions under which they lived in the Nazi era. All had "strong Christian affinities." Under the challenge of terror they were "Christians by choice, Jews by decree." Each responded to her Jewishness in a distinct way: Stein felt close to the Jews; Weil had a hateful attitude toward them and tried to obliterate herself as a Jew; Frank and Hillesum both affirmed their Jewish identities. In the face of Hitler, each, in her own way, resisted.

""Open Every Door"" by Zelda Popkin is a novel about a young girl named Sarah who grows up in a small town in the early 1900s. Despite her humble beginnings, Sarah is determined to make something of herself and escape the limitations of her small town. She dreams of becoming a writer and attending college, but her family and community hold her back with their traditional values and expectations.As Sarah navigates the challenges of growing up and pursuing her dreams, she also grapples with issues of identity and belonging. She feels torn between her desire to fit in and be accepted by her community, and her need to be true to herself and follow her own path.Throughout the novel, Sarah encounters a variety of characters who help shape her journey, including a supportive teacher, a rebellious friend, and a mysterious stranger who offers her a glimpse of a different world. As she learns to navigate these relationships and find her own voice, Sarah discovers that the key to unlocking her potential is to open every door and embrace every opportunity that comes her way.""Open Every Door"" is a coming-of-age story that explores themes of identity, ambition, and the power of perseverance. It is a poignant and inspiring tale that will resonate with readers of all ages and backgrounds.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

Argentina is the only country in the Americas that has successfully erased the presence of Indians, Africans, and mestizos from its national story. Official documents, reports, and censuses have largely omitted any references to the country's non-European inhabitants, mirroring official policies that once included the extermination of indigenous peoples and continued to encourage Europeanization well into the twentieth century. In Captive Women, Susana Rotker exposes this concerted act of forgetting by looking at a historical phenomenon that has been expunged from the national record: the widespread kidnapping of white women by Argentine Indians in the nineteenth century.Captivity narratives form a major part of the early colonial literature of the United States, but Argentina has no such tradition. These narratives contradict Argentina's carefully shaped self-image, one historically based on the absence of aboriginal peoples and the impossibility of miscegenation. Captive Women uses close and imaginative readings of military documents, government treaties, travel journals, essays, and memoirs to explore the foundations of Argentina's strategies of silence and its negation of uncomfortable historical realities.

This book is the first to evaluate the development of feminist scholarship in various fields within Jewish studies. Eminent scholars in biblical studies, rabbinics, theology, history, literature, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and film studies assess the state of knowledge about women in each field, analyze how this knowledge has affected the mainstream of the discipline, and propose new questions and concepts to pursue. The authors - Joyce Antler, Lynn Davidman, Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Judith Hauptman, Paula E. Hyman, Sonya Michel, Judith Plaskow, Susan Starr Sered, Naomi Sokoloff, Shelly Tenenbaum, and Hava Tirosh-Rothschild - consider a range of fascinating issues.Among them are: whether Jewish culture is as patriarchal as is typically assumed; how gender arrangements in Jewish life are shaped by the structures and culture of the larger societies in which Jews live; the different ways in which changes in Jewish families over time and place are experienced by women and by men; whether women or men have been more reluctant to assimilate; and how segregation of the sexes has affected women's autonomy in different periods and locations in Jewish history. Together, the articles present a strong argument for the inclusion of gender as a category of analysis in all fields of Jewish studies.

Molly Picon began as a child actor in the Yiddish Theatre at age six. Picon went on to appear in many films, beginning with silent movies. In 1934, Picon had her own musical comedy radio show, Picon went on to appear in many TV shows and her final role was as Roger Moore's mother in cameo appearances in the comedies Cannonball Run and its sequel Cannonball Run II. In "So Laugh a Little" the famous Yiddish actress, has written a funny and poignant book describing her life journey all the while paying homage to the many life lessons learned from her grandmother. Molly's grandmother came to Philadelphia from Russia and helped raise Molly and encourage her in her career in show business. Part autobiography, part common-sense wisdom, this book will engage and entertain you through every chapter. Starting with Molly's early start in Yiddish to her later success in her own stage show and on to many TV and film roles, Molly shares life advice that is just as important to hear today as it was when the book was originally published in 1962.

Translation, with full explanatory notes, of the two works of Teresa de Cartagena, the fifteenth-century Spanish nun. This affordable, engaging and important translation of Teresa de Cartagena's works significantly expands and enriches the current canon of medieval women writers. ANNE CLARK BARTLETT, DePAUL UNIVERSITY Teresa de Cartagena was born in Burgos in about 1415-20, into a powerful family of Jewish origin. All we know of Teresa comes from her work: she was deaf and not physically strong, she was a nun, and - perhaps the source of her resilience -she was well-educated, above all in religion and moral philosophy. Deaf from early womanhood, her consolatory treatise Grove of the Infirm is a reflection on the spiritual benefits of illness; her second work, Wonder at the Works of God , was apparently written to counter the contention of her critics that a handicapped woman had nothing of value to say. This artful manipulation of the familiar devotional genre of "the treatise of consolation" reveals a woman writer intimately familiar with the cultural practices of her era; overall, both works allow a rare glimpse into the world of women in fifteenth-century Spain. DAYLE SEIDENSPINNER-NUNEZ is Professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literature at the University of Notre Dame.

From the beginning, myths have told of women who lived apart from men -- the Sirens who sang on the Aegean rocks, the Amazons of the Brazilian jungle, the self-reproducing women on islands in Polynesia, to mention only a few. As this theme emerged in her own fiction, Batya Weinbaum became intrigued by its persistence across time and cultures and began tracing it in literature and mythology, as well as in actual locales that are or were said to be islands of women. In this fascinating, interdisciplinary book, she explores how the myth of Amazons has served varying psychological needs in different cultures over time. Weinbaum first analyzes various historical interpretations and uses of the Amazon archetype, some designed to empower women, others created by men to disempower them. She next turns to the original Greek context, in Homer's epics and other aspects of Greek culture, and then traces how Amazons eventually evolved into negative representations of paganism. Moving from Rodriguez de Montalvo's fifteenth-century Sergas de Esplandian, which imagined an island of women in the New World, Weinbaum concludes with revealing fieldwork she conducted on Isla Mujeres (Island of Women) off the Yucatan Peninsula, which included giving birth with the participation of a native Maya midwife. Batya Weinbaum is Assistant Professor of English at Cleveland State University. She founded and edits the journal Femspec.